Recall of lead-tainted goods expands

The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday announced four recalls of Chinese-manufactured children's jewelry and toys for containing the toxic metal lead, including 250,000 SpongeBob SquarePants address books and journals.

The federal agency formally announced the recall of 66,000 toy tops and 4,700 toy pails by Schylling Associates Inc., a Massachusetts toymaker, for containing lead in the handles.

The number of toys recalled is nearly 20,000 more than the 51,000 tops Schylling announced it would recall two weeks ago. The company announced the earlier recall after tests performed on a Thomas and Friends spinning top at the request of the Tribune showed a lead level 40 times higher than the legal limit.

The Schylling toys covered by the recall are tops and pails painted with Thomas & Friends, Curious George or a circus scene. The tops were sold for about $13 and the pails for about $6 between July 2001 and July 2002.

After the Tribune disclosed the test results to the company, officials said they found a June 2002 test report showing that the Thomas & Friends top contained lead paint on its wooden knob. A month later, the company decided to shift to a plastic knob, but it never disclosed the test results or recalled the toys.

Jack Schylling, company president, said in a statement that the number of tops being recalled jumped by 15,000 because "while there has been no indication that an increased number of tops contain lead, we are casting the widest net possible in the interest of the consumer and are recalling every top made from our manufacturer between 2001 and 2002."

The safety commission said that Martin Designs Inc. of Ashland, Ohio, was recalling the address books and journals that feature the popular television character SpongeBob SquarePants because the paint on the metal spiral bindings can contain excessive levels of lead. The items sold in retail stores across the country from June 2006 through last month for about $2 each, the agency said.

A Tribune analysis of safety commission records shows that while there have been 140 lead recalls since the toxic metal was banned in 1977, 75 of them, or 54 percent, have occurred since January 2004. Of those, 27 have been for lead paint, and 48 have been for lead metal (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). Nearly 90 percent of the products recalled for lead since 2004 were manufactured in China.

Wednesday's recalls are just the latest in a series of lead-based recalls of high-profile toys. Those include nearly 1 million Fisher-Price toys and 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden railway toys. Last week, Mattel Inc. recalled 253,000 of its Sarge die-cast metal toy jeeps.

The lead recalls, as well as numerous other recalls of toys and products made in China, have prompted federal legislators to propose laws that would ban importing these products unless they have been certified as safe through independent testing.

One of those sponsors, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) said Wednesday that he would be meeting with toy company executives over the next several days to enlist their support for a third-party-testing bill.

"It looks like this issue is not going away," Durbin said in a telephone interview.

"The toy industry is becoming alarmed, and they are going into the holiday season when they have the majority of their sales. We need to create a new safeguard to prevent more dangerous toys from being sold."

The two other recalls involved children's jewelry that was found to contain excess levels of lead, according to the safety commission.

Toby NYC of New York recalled 14,000 Toby & Me jewelry sets that variously include a necklace, bracelet, earrings and a ring. The sets sold for about $8 from August 2006 until May.

Buy-Rite Designs Inc. of Freehold, N.J., recalled 7,900 children's Divine Inspiration charm bracelets that have silver-colored charms, including angels, crosses and hearts, and clear and pink beads that hang from a silver-colored chain. The bracelets sold for $1 at Dollar stores and other retail stores from March 2004 until this month, the commission said.